Paul: Tigers’ Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker hope to enter Hall of Fame side by side

When the BBWAA all had their quarrels and parted…

Detroit — It continues to frustrate Tigers fans.

And, sure, it frustrates the Tigers of yesteryear, too, that no player on that 1984 World Series championship team is represented in Cooperstown.

That puts the 1984 Tigers alongside the 1981 Dodgers as the only two World Series champions, pre-1995, not to have a Hall of Fame player.

“It’s because we’re Detroit, and not New York or Boston. You understand that?” said Paul Carey, Ernie ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 7-2-2014

Pittsburgh Press, July 2, 1914:

Pitcher Elmer Daily, of the Allegheny Steel team of Tarentum and Brackenridge, killed a dog with a batted ball Tuesday evening at Peterson park when the Steel team was practicing. A dog was chasing the ball over the field when it seized a hot one from Daily’s willow too soon after it had left the bat. The drive turned him end over end and left him inert on the ground.

:(

No snark today. Just a “that really sucks”.

OMNICHATTER 7-2-2014

The “Hey, Batter Batter” OMNICHATTER

Angels acquire Rich Hill from Red Sox

Rich Hill has spent all season at Triple-A and now the Red Sox have traded him for cash considerations the Angels, who immediately called up the left-handed reliever.

This season at Triple-A for the Red Sox he posted a 3.23 ERA and 45/17 K/BB ratio in 39 innings, holding opponents to a .206 batting average and zero homers.

Rick Porcello gets another shutout, Tigers beat A’s

Porcello is now 3-0 with 24 scoreless innings over his last three outings. He became the first pitcher since Baltimore’s Jeff Ballard on Aug. 21, 1989, to throw a shutout without a walk or strikeout. No Tigers pitcher had done it since Dizzy Trout in 1944.

Zeroes everywhere with this guy.

New Hearing for Barry Bonds

I thought this was dead and buried but the full 9th Circuit has decided to hear the case again.

BBTF lawyers—report for duty.

Fox Sports: Ex-Dodgers pitcher Bobby Castillo dies at 59 after battle with cancer

Bobby Castillo, a former Dodgers and Minnesota Twins pitcher credited with teaching Fernando Valenzuela how to throw a screwball, died Monday in a Los Angeles hospital after a battle with cancer, the team announced. He was 59.

Grantland: The sad, financially successful legacy of baseball commissioner Bud Selig

This column never would have happened if baseball had a salary cap….

In many ways, Selig will be reckoned as one of the great commissioners of baseball. This is because, in the universe of baseball enthusiasts, the commissioner’s office always has been the repository of what Lewis Lapham once referred to as the American “wish for kings.” It was the commissioner’s office that threw out the Black Sox but winked at gamblers in other cities. It was the commissioner’s office that ...

Pearlman: Trading for George Foster…Frank Cashen’s Best Move

Was Lee Mazzilli overrated at the time of the deal?

One thing that, to me, stands out about Cashen: When folks try and figure out the biggest trade of his 12 years with New York, they focus upon Keith Hernandez being lifted from the Cardinals for two pitchers, or Gary Carter coming via Montreal in exchange for Hubie Brooks and a bunch of mediocre youngsters. They’ll mention David Cone’s acquisition from Kansas City for Ed Hearn; maybe even Ron Darling and Walt Terrell being taken from ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 7-1-2014

Milwaukee Journal, July 1, 1914:

Ball players never hand the ball to an umpire? [sic] It would be a violation of one of the strictest of the unwritten laws of the game. Even though a player is within a couple of paces, or one pace, of an umpire, he will flip the ball to him. Why this is true the majority of players cannot say. When asked one of them stated: “Guess it’s just because we don’t like to have any more to do with an umpire than is absolutely necessary…”

I’d never thought about it ...

OTP - July 2014: Republicans Lose To Democrats For Sixth Straight Year In Congressional Baseball Game

As Time magazine recently reported, Republicans, frustrated by their 22-0 loss in last year’s game, sought a new coach to shake things up on the field this year. Some members even appealed to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to fire the coach, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). But Boehner said he wasn’t powerful enough to control the baseball diamond, and Barton refused to walk away after spending 28 years with the game. Instead, he brought on Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), a former ...

Techie’s website hits ‘cool’ factor out of the park - Houston Chronicle

Baseball cool or geek cool?

You don’t have to work for the Astros or any team to be baseball cool in this town, and Daren Willman is quintessential baseball cool.

What To Expect: Mariners RHP Taijuan Walker - BaseballAmerica.com

Who is Taijuan Walker?

Notes: The history behind why Tanaka, Abreu count as rookies | FOX Sports

Rosenthal’s latest notes.

The holdup bears a resemblance to the delays that occasionally occur in free agency when players fail physicals and teams try to rework deals.
If indeed Aiken failed his physical, the Astros would have the right to offer him 40 percent of his signing bonus value, according to the new draft rules that were negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement in 2011.
The signing bonus value for the No. 1 overall pick is $7,922,100. Forty percent of that would be ...

Relieved Hessman sets IL homer record | MiLB.com

Ollie Carnegie isn’t exactly a household name.

Along with the smell of champagne and some Gatorade stains on his jersey, what Mike Hessman seemed to take away most from Monday night was a sense of relief.

Exactly one month after tying the International League career home run record, Hessman homered in the third inning of Triple-A Toledo’s 9-1 win over Indianapolis on Monday night. The round-tripper was the 259th for Hessman in the IL, surpassing long-time Buffalo outfielder Ollie Carnegie for ...

Harper, Williams give thoughts on Nats’ lineup | Comcast SportsNet Washington

Managers love this kind of stuff.

Harper, in fact, reiterated that point on Monday. He said he found out Williams’ lineup on Twitter and respects his skipper’s decision to put him back in left. That said, he thinks the Nats’ best lineup is a little different than the one constructed on Monday.

“I’m in the lineup, that’s all that matters. If I had the lineup it would maybe not be the same. But he’s got the lineup card, he’s got the pen and he knows what he’s doing. There’s nothing I can do about ...

Manny Ramirez vows to mentor Cub prospects

Just Manny being ... mature?

“Everybody makes mistakes, you, me, and everybody that’s in this room,” Ramirez said Monday while speaking to the media for the first time since signing a minor league deal with the Chicago Cubs. “But that’s it, you just have to grow and move on.” ....

“Theo (Epstein) was really honest,” Ramirez said of the Cubs’ president. “He said, ‘Hey, we don’t got a chance for you in the big leagues, but we got some young guys that we want you to help,’ and then I took it.”

...Read More...

Walt Davis Posted: July 01, 2014 at 01:09 AM | 33 comment(s)
  Beats: cubs, manny ramirez

OMNICHATTER 7-1-2014

The Start-Of-July OMNICHATTER

Frank Cashen dies at age 88

All bow to Bow-tie Cashen.

Frank Cashen, the architect of the 1986 world champion New York Mets, died Monday, a team spokesman said. He was 88.

Cashen, who died at Memorial Hospital in Easton, Maryland, served as Mets general manager from 1980 through 1991, transforming the organization from a perennial loser into a juggernaut.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Mets owned the best record in Major League Baseball during Cashen’s final eight seasons as they compiled a 743-550 mark from ...

OMNICHATTER 6-30-2014

The Daily OMNICHATTER

Bryce Harper Returns To Nats Lineup, But Where

Yankees, Jeter, Red Sox, Girardi, Tanaka, Sabermetrics, silly grand predictions, get off my lawn…
(hopefully that pushes all the right buttons to get this posted before the end of the regular season.)

For more than two months, Matt Williams has been waiting to fill out a lineup card that includes Bryce Harper in it. And for several weeks, the Nationals’ first-time manager has been contemplating just how much he wants to shake up the rest of his lineup as a result of Harper’s return.

The ...

Awful Announcing - RETHINKING BASEBALL ON NATIONAL TELEVISION

There’s a stigma attached to writing about baseball’s predicament on television. Mostly, the idea that if you write about it, you’re proclaiming the death of the sport. It’s fair that the people who love it (which includes me) defend it, because as we’ve seen with soccer, sometimes it’s worth defending the thing that you like more than almost anything.

Fact is, however, that Major League Baseball has a national television problem. Sunday Night Baseball is doing fine, but ESPN still ...

Leaked: 10 Months Of The Houston Astros’ Internal Trade Talks

Some of these asks were just foolish.

Two years ago, the Houston Astros constructed “Ground Control”—a built-from-scratch online database for the private use of the Astros front office. It is by all accounts a marvel, an easy-to-use interface giving executives instant access to player statistics, video, and communications with other front offices around baseball. All it needs, apparently, is a little better password protection.
....
7/26/2013
[Nationals GM Mike] Rizzo called [Luhnow] to ...

Melewski: The scoop on Schoop: Showalter on his rookie second baseman

Jezus, how do you defend a 65 OPS+‘er…Buck Showalter finds a way.

“Think it’s more a challenge mentally and emotionally than anything,” Showalter said. “The thing I like (is) his defense hasn’t suffered. He knows, it gets harped on, bring something every game. How are you going to impact this game?

“You don’t get frustrated with them, you get frustrated for them. Because we feel like Jon is going to be a good hitter up here and there are things you go through. You know Manny (Machado), maybe ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-30-2014

New York Tribune, June 30, 1914:

A near-riot marked the first game of the Cincinnati-Chicago series [in Chicago yesterday], which the Cubs won by a score of 10 to 7. In the visitors’ sixth inning Moran fouled down the third base line. Hoblitzell protested to Eason, the umpire, that the hit was fair and was ordered to the clubhouse. Charley Herzog ran into the argument and was ordered to join Hoblitzell.

A few moments later one of the players took Moran’s bat and threw it toward the players’ ...

Will soccer’s gain be baseball’s loss?

When the 2014 World Cup concludes, soccer isn’t going to disappear the way it typically has. Major League Soccer is growing in influence and popularity in traditional sports cities. More significant, major networks such as ESPN, Fox, and NBC Sports have adopted the sport.

In particular, ESPN’s awesome communications machinery is committed, to an unprecedented extent, to growing the world’s most popular game in America.

And if the 21st century has taught us any important sports lesson, it’s ...

Bill Madden: An Old Brew GM

Melvin’s: With Yo’ Eyes, Not Yo’ Stats. (King Buzzkill)

For a guy whose team has just had the best first-half in the 45-year history of the franchise, Milwaukee Brewers GM Doug Melvin is sounding pretty grumpy about the state of baseball these days. Maybe it’s because the 62-year-old Melvin, an old school GM who values scouts over Ivy League whiz kid stat geeks, thinks his NL Central-leading Brewers deserve a little more respect from the Sabermetrics crowd. “There’s this one guy,” ...

Caputo: Several more Detroit athletes are HOF worthy

Sabermetrics rule!

2. Alan Trammell – It is incredible Trammell only gets a relatively small percentage of the votes for the Hall of Fame. The baseball-reference version of the Sabermetrics statistic WAR rates him as the 93rd best MLB player of all time. He filled a premier position brilliantly, shortstop, and was a World Series MVP. He was robbed of the American League MVP Award he richly deserved in 1987, placing second behind overrated Blue Jays’ outfielder George Bell. Trammell was ...

Jerry Green: MLB Sabermetrics geeks quick to make silly grand proclamations

And all hail SABR’s Alex Bensky in the comment’s section!

This was considerably before Bill James learned to count to two. So it was somewhat before the creation of Sabermetrics with its collection of numbers freaks. This is the group of baseball intelligentsia who pay homage to James with the mystical belief that statistics never mattered until such arcane data as WAR and OPS were concocted.

Bradley’s gem also was somewhat before Clayton Kershaw’s recent no-hitter for the Dodgers was ...

Leitch: Billy Beane’s Ascendant A’s Are Playing a Brand-New Brand of Moneyball

But, but…Harold Reynolds said “the A’s aren’t going to win because they make too many errors.”

Except: The A’s didn’t actually end up trumping anybody. Moneyball the movie and the book are the rare inspirational sports stories that end with a big game … that the little guys lose. And, all told, after Moneyball came out, the A’s went through an eight-year stretch where they made the playoffs only once. This led to some mockery inside the baseball industry, particularly among those ...